leave out all the rest
by A. X. Zanier
Summary: Shorts and outtakes that parallel the only hero left
1. Chapter 1

_leave out all the rest_

 _. . ._

"Glarg, your BARF sucks," Rinn complained, removing the glasses, tossing them on the nearest horizontal surface, and glaring at them with an obvious wince. "Your neuro calibration is completely off." She rubbed her forehead, eyes closing for a long moment as if the lights had upped their lumens by a factor of ten.

I sighed, sympathizing with the headache I knew she now sported. "No shit. Why do you think I asked you to collaborate on it." There must be some key point I had missed and no matter how smart I could be I still needed help on occasion and Rinn… Rinn had cornered the market on neural mapping. "You really think this will help fix your boy toy?"

She poked the glasses with a single finger, a look of discomfort on her face. "If you mean James, then yes. I'm certain of it." She met my eyes. "With some modifications."

Yeah, because the current design simply allowed one to access and project existing memories, not change them. Not really. You could manipulate the scene projected, but the original memory would remain the same. She had bigger goals in mind. She intended to remove deeply embedded programming that had taken months if not years to literally beat into one Sergeant James Barnes. The memories would remain, but, in theory - one I agreed with - they would no longer be the chaotic mess she had described. He would remember everything, from his life before the war to every single moment he'd been The Winter Soldier with the perfect clarity and horror that he deserved.

So, yeah, I might still want to inflict some serious pain on the man who had killed my parents, no matter how innocent he might actually be.

What a fucked up mess.

She waved at the projector, causing the room to revert to blank walls instead of the surfing memory she had been indulging in. She missed surfing, even I could see that, but she remained stubborn and refused to back down on her stance, no matter what I tried to persuade her with. About the only thing I hadn't tried was buying her company outright, but since she owned it all by her lonesome I had no way of getting to it on the sly.

"It's a good idea, but you went at it with a sledge. This needs a ball-peen at most."

She knew how to play me, using mechanical references and all. "Are you accusing me of not being delicate enough? Because I am telling you I can be quite delicate in the right situation." I threw in a leer just to annoy her then picked up the glasses and tucked them into the pocket of my jeans. Rinn visits didn't require suits and I'd been working in the garage most of the morning, tinkering on a car I'd picked up recently for rebuilding purposes.

She snorted. "Iron Man pretty much says it all right there."

"You know, this project would go faster if you were here more often." An argument I had used before so I doubted it would work this time either, but I kind of wanted to see what excuse she'd come up with this time.

"I'm here every ten days at the most, that should be more than enough. It's not like we don't have other things to do, including businesses to run."

Damn it. She put up a blockade every time I even tried to suggest our collaboration become something other than two ships passing in the night. "How do you manage to come up with a different answer every single time?" I waved towards the door, following her out into the hallway.

"By having an IQ above thirty?"

I could hear the smirk in her voice alone. "You can't give me a straight answer, can you?"

She stopped and spun about, head tipped slightly. "When you really want one I do. I know you don't care for why I'm doing this-"

"More for whom, but go on."

"But the end result will benefit a lot of people. That's what's important." So earnest and so damnably correct.

I'd been dragging my feet because of Barnes even though I knew the long term benefits far outweighed my personal feelings on the soon to be test subject. "Can't help it, I guess, with all of you choosing him over me."

"Excuse me?"

Oops. That comment had actually pissed her off, I could see it in the narrowing of her eyes. "Barnes. All of this is because of him."

"Wow, the winners really are fans of rewriting history." She sounded thoroughly disgusted.

"And in exactly what way did I win?" The Avengers broken, my friends gone, choosing to live in the shadows instead of trying to find a middle ground in this mess we had all created.

"So, there's an arrest warrant out in your name?"

Well, no, but Ross wasn't exactly happy with me either. I'd taken care to not piss him or the UN Panel off recently, but I also wasn't exactly playing nice either. I had other things to worry about these days. "Would you prefer there was?"

She sighed, fingers pinching the bridge of her nose. "No, of course not. Shit, Tony, stop trying to push me away."

"I'm not," I argued weakly. She could just have a point. Since Siberia I'd pretty much turned back into a recluse, keeping in contact with Rhodey; no chance in hell I'd walk away from him, but interacting no more than necessary with SI and those who worked at the Avengers compound. I spent most of my time alone at the mansion, avoiding any place that reminded me of what had been lost thanks to the Accords.

"You are," she snapped right back. "But you won't succeed no matter how hard you try. FRIDAY likes me more than you and will let me in wherever you hide."

I huffed out a breath half in laughter and half exasperation because I knew Rinn was right. FRIDAY would rat me out to her _every single time._ "I could just go off the grid," I muttered and she burst out in laughter.

"Tony, you wouldn't last a day without your tech and we both know it." She set a hand on my shoulder and looked me right in the eyes. "It's okay though, we like you this way."

I shook my head. "Not everyone." I'd ruined everything I'd tried to create, destroyed everything I touched these days. Little wonder I'd gone delving into ways to examine my past, maybe, just maybe, if I could change things and then I might be able to put my life back together.

"What do you want me to say, Tony? Want me to mediate a truce between you and Steve?"

I shook my head. "No, that bridge has been nuked."

"Then what?"

"Come work for me. I can protect you here." Her problems wouldn't go away completely, but it would help.

"Yes, because what Stark Industries needs is a game division." She hung her head down. "I worked damn hard to get where I am, I need a friend not a babysitter for fuck's sake."

And now she was angry again. I really should learn to take more care with my wording. "You still having issues?"

"Oh hell yes," she told me without hesitation. "Even your recommended company mysteriously lost some of my gear." She shook her head. "I need some serious painkillers for this discussion."

Shit. I had assured her that company was above board and couldn't be bought, but apparently I had been wrong. They were about to lose a really well paying client for that error in judgement. "Come on."

I led her to a nearby lounge area and dug out some pain meds that might actually put a dent in the headache I knew to be pounding away behind her eyes. She all but collapsed onto one of the couches, sinking in deep. I handed her the water and the pills, which she swallowed down quickly. I perched on the edge next to her, not certain if she wanted me anywhere near.

"What's left to move?" No, I didn't want her leaving the US, but I understood her decision and I hadn't realized how bad it had gotten, that companies I'd vetted and trusted had turned against her. Someone wanted her tech and would do pretty much anything to get it.

"The _real_ servers."

"How can I help?"

"I don't know that you can. I might have a crew that'll get them moved safely, but I need to up my security on site till I can."

"Who's watching them now?" She had an impressive security system installed, but even that could be hacked or just bludgeoned to death.

"A couple of my guys. I've done my best to make it seem like I've already moved them, but…"

"Someone has probably figured it out. They'd be safe here," I offered and she gave me a weak smile.

"I know, and I do appreciate it, I just… there's a reason I never moved into the Tower, that hasn't changed."

"Right, 'cause you haven't placed yourself in harms way by siding with _them_." I got to my feet and paced stiffly away. I opened and closed cabinets until I found a bottle of decent bourbon I'd stashed away at some point in time. I poured a generous amount into two glasses and stalked back to stand before her, holding one out for her to take. "Where'd you end up going, anyway? Wakanda?"

She'd run there less than a week after the Steve had been branded a fugitive, King T'Challa taking advantage of her sudden freedom to create sims for anyone. It hadn't been till several weeks later that I figured out the former Avengers had run there as well. Yeah, I could have gone to Ross, either of them, and gotten the lot of them arrested, but I didn't really want to. Didn't want to let my ego get in the way of the chance to maybe make amends in the future.

And maybe didn't want to miss out on a chance to kill the son of a bitch that had strangled my mom.

I heaved a huge sigh and sat down again.

"Austria." She swirled the bourbon around the glass then downed a large swallow without even a hint of hesitation.

We hadn't gone drinking in quite some time and I'd forgotten how she drank like a fish, not able to get more than a hint of a buzz thanks to those damn nanobots in her. Christ she was more like _them_ in so many ways, little wonder she wanted no part of me.

"Rinn-"

She cut off my words by wrapping her hand about mine and tipped to lean her forehead against my shoulder. "I am not running away from you. I am not abandoning you. I will be here for you as much as I can, but I have to live my life." She sighed, twisting her head to look blindly out into the room. "You are all so damn broken, do you have any idea how hard it is to deal with? How badly I want to fix this whole mess?" She downed the rest of the alcohol and set the glass down on the coffee table in front of us. "I won't choose sides, but I have to do what is best for me first."

"And chasing after them is best for you?"

"Chasing? What are you talking about? Yes, I made sure to talk to Steve when I went to Wakanda, he's my friend, had just lost Peggy, and had the shittiest week on the planet. I thought he might appreciate seeing someone who had no ulterior motives. I went and saw Clint and Nat too, you gonna get bitchy about that?"

I rubbed my hand over my face wishing she could not be quite so blunt for once in her life. "You went and saw everyone, didn't you?" She had probably gone to see Rhodey and he simply hadn't mentioned it. The two of them hadn't interacted nearly as much, but I could see her checking up on him simply because he was my oldest friend, and for that I could forgive her.

"Tried to. You kept refusing my calls." She settled back into the cushions, but didn't release my hand.

A good thing as I needed the contact. Needed to know someone still gave a flying fuck about me. I hadn't exactly been in a good place afterwards and had been focused on getting Rhodey's house in order and had pretty much ignored the rest of reality as unimportant. So, yeah, I guess I had kind of ignored her calls along with everyone else.

I'd designed two new suits before she'd barged her way in, FRIDAY not even giving me a heads up that she'd arrived, much less that she stood behind me in the room. Her first act had been to give me a hug, which I had hated… until I hadn't.

She muttered something under her breath, heel of her free hand going to her forehead.

"Still hurting?"

"Worse if anything," slurring her words badly.

I shifted sideways, fingers on her chin. "Let me see."

She groaned, but didn't argue. Her eyes had turned a lovely shade of bloodshot, reminiscent of one of my more impressive benders, and I doubted she could focus on anything at the moment. "The BARF should not have interfered with your little buddies, I checked five ways to Sunday before even suggesting you try the damn thing on."

"I know. I read over the specs you sent me. Doesn't mean they aren't unhappy about the EM field being generated. They probably think they're protecting me." She swore in three different languages, all of which I knew, but still… impressive. "I'm useless as a test subject, so we'll either need a willing victim… uh, volunteer or to abuse you."

I snorted at her phrasing, picked up my glass and handed it to her to finish. Maybe it would distract the 'bots enough for the headache to subside. "While I would prefer a willing victim, it would mean letting them in on the plan and doing a neural mapping and-"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't need any more knowing than necessary." She downed the drink and handed the empty glass back to me.

"Stay here tonight."

She raised a single blonde eyebrow at me.

"You have anyplace else you need to be?" She probably did, but I was hoping that it would give me some time to show off the lab I'd set up for the project and that it might just entice her to stay for more than a few hours at a time.

"L.A. My people would like to sleep in their own beds now and then." She shot me a wry grin at which I rolled my eyes.

"Like you sleep in Steve's?" I shot to my feet and stalked away to refill the glasses before she could do more than gape at me.

"Wow. Jealous much?"

"Envious," I corrected making her snort, followed by a moan of pain. I winced slightly, last thing I wanted to do was hurt anyone else, but my mouth refused to pause and give my brain a chance to weigh in on the commentary before it slipped out.

"Laurin-"

"That's my business, Tony, and none of yours."

"It is if it'll get you hurt," I argued, carrying the bottle over to where she sat glowering up at me. The effect only slightly diminished by the bloodshot eyes and blown pupils.

"The two of you, pains in my ass."

"What do you mean?" I sat beside her, putting enough distance between us to discourage hitting. I poured the bourbon, set the bottle down and urged her to take the glass I'd filled for her.

"I mean you spend all of your time trying to _protect_ everyone, while Steve tries to _save_ everyone and neither of you can take that step back and realize you simply _can't._ That sometimes you lose."

"I don't like to lose." Obvious, especially to her, but it felt like it needed to be said.

"Have you met Steve? He was a competitive little fuck when five foot nothing and ninety-eight pounds wet."

I ground my teeth. Like I hadn't grown up hearing all the stories about the always perfect Steve Rogers. Captain America, the savior of the war and the best man my father had ever known… and the one person I would never be able to emulate. I threw back my drink and poured more. "You gonna regale me with stories of his ability to do no wrong too? 'Cause if so I really have better things to do."

For a long moment she looked at me as if I had turned a lovely shade of insane, then burst out into pained laughter that continued until tears ran down her cheeks and I had to the rescue the glass from her hand before it spilled all over the leather.

"Oh dear god, Tony, is that what you think? That I worship at the feet of the glory that is Steve Rogers? Do I come across as some fainting virgin whose thighs can't help but quiver at the sight of his biceps?" Her look hardened. "He's a stubborn little shit who won't back down from a fight and will be the first to sacrifice himself if there's even the slightest possibility it'll save the day." Rinn surged to her feet, swaying a bit, but the anger that had bubbled up kept her going. "He's so goddamned disconnected with life that he doesn't really care if he dies so long at the rest of the world can keep turning." She spun about and stabbed a hand at me for emphasis, then said at a near whisper, "You have no idea how many times he's wished he'd never been found."

I had no idea what to say. In retrospect her words told me nothing I didn't already know about the man, but to hear it said, and by someone who had chosen to stay on the outside of our little clique... it hit me, and hard. Since waking up he'd had his reality dumped sideways any number of times, been thrown into battles, had his home ripped away, lost the few connections to his past, to what he remembered as real and important fade to dust. Little wonder when his best friend had reappeared in his life, he'd done everything in his power to get him back.

And then I'd gone and fucked up royally.

I tried to fix it, of course, but that backfired even more badly than the original screw up. And, admittedly, I didn't screw up very often, but apparently when I did the mess turned out to be spectacular.

"I was just trying to protect them," I mumbled, more to myself than her, but I made certain she could hear it.

"Sledge."

I snickered. She had a point there, but I had grown up in a go big or go home kind of environment. "How do I protect the world without one?"

She stared at me as if I should know the answer. "By not doing it alone."

"You offering to help?"

She nodded. "But you have to promise to not shut me out."

That might be the harder thing to accomplish. It had always been easier to hide in my work and avoid the life that swirled all about it. Look how well that had turned out. Pepper gone, the Avengers broken, my friends in hiding from me as much as the rest of the world. Only showing their faces during emergencies, though they often kept those faces covered so the world could turn a blind eye and justify not arresting them. I had either pushed away or avoided all the rest. I suppose if I had to let one person in, Rinn wouldn't be the worst choice.

"You will stay here tonight and once the headache is manageable we'll get to work on integrating the BARF with your neural mapping."

"Tony, I need-"

I held up a hand to cut her off. "I'm going to send FRIDAY to Cyko. I need to beta test one of the new suits anyway. This'll be perfect for that. I think she already has access to your security system, yes?"

Rinn nodded slowly.

"Perfect. You can keep her until the servers are safe in their new home and you won't have to worry about babysitting them. That is unless you don't trust me."

"I'm here, aren't I?"

Hard to argue with that.


	2. Chapter 2

Giant mug of coffee in one hand, utterly ignoring the fact the current time to be five in the evening or so, I scrubbed my other hand across my face and attempted to hide the yawn as I leaned against the wall just inside the door.

"When did you get here?"

Laurin didn't move an inch. Well, other than her head bopping up and down and fingers moving over the keys. She had half a dozen screens going at the same time, some with code scrolling past, the others with the results of the changes she made.

I glanced over them, getting a rough idea of the modifications she'd made to her neural mapping program and how it integrated with the simulation running. The map display shifting minutely as she altered certain points. I sipped at the coffee, a dark roast I had brought in from Costa Rica. I had no idea who this map belonged to, but I could see the target area, an odd mass of neural nodes knotted and twisted together. At a guess she was attempting untangle it.

As I watched the knot suddenly released, the vibrant spot of light fading and spreading out to match the other areas.

Rinn clapped her hands together and shouted "Yes."

I couldn't help it, I smiled, loving her enthusiasm and glad she could still feel it. Some days, even with that Eureka moment, I felt little or nothing. Creating that next great new thing had lost it's shine even though I knew I needed to keep going.

My job not yet done.

Hers just beginning.

Maybe I could keep her from losing her joy of discovery.

I closed the distance and tapped her on the shoulder, prepared for the worst given she'd shown no awareness of me being in the room. When she turned about I understood why. A pair of earbuds in place, probably drowning out the rest of reality. I often did the same thing, but without the headphones and usually loud enough to rattle the windows.

She popped them out, grinning like a crazy lady. "Hey, Tony." She took the mug from me and downed a healthy swallow much to my dismay.

I had kept my distance expecting her to be startled and potentially react with violence, so felt somewhat disappointed at her total lack of reaction, which meant. "FRIDAY warned you I was here." I leaned back against the desk, watching her.

" _Of course I did, boss. Figured you wouldn't want to be wearing that coffee._ "

"Good call," I agreed. I debated taking my coffee back, but she had clearly claimed it as her own. "You got started without me."

She shrugged, wrapping her hands around the mug as if cold. "You were actually sleeping, no way in hell I was going to interrupt that."

"You could have joined me." I went for a leer, but based on her reaction, missed the mark by a wide margin.

"You need to figure out how to sleep alone again. 'Sides, FRIDAY said you weren't having nightmares for a change."

"Traitor," I muttered at the computer.

Rinn snickered. "She's got your best interests at heart."

I nodded, eyes on the floor, not able to meet hers right now even with the implication that if I had been having a nightmare she would have joined me. I spent a lot of time alone these days, so it was almost a relief to know I wouldn't always have to.

If I could convince her to move in that would be even better. Not that I would mention it again. She'd made it clear it would not be happening. Not without serious motivation anyway and I would not wish that on her for any reason. "So who is this?"

She gave me a droll look, which was answer enough. Me, of course, the guinea pig for this little experiment. I needed more caffeine to be truly functional.

Rinn held out the mug with a sly grin.

I took it and tried to ignore the fact that half of it had been devoured by her and that she'd handed me something. One of my odder quirks with her being one of the few people I could handle taking things from. These days, anyway. I drank and watched her over the rim of the mug, my glasses fogging slightly.

She waited patiently while I debated what to say. "What memory did you zap?"

"Not a clue. With this I can only see the convergence, but I have no idea what it is. I could have just erased your first kiss for all I know. Minds don't store things in a linear fashion. Well, not really. I can find memories that have been there a long time, those are usually basic learned skills. Touch, sight, sound." She highlighted some areas in my neural map that were noticeably richer in color, suggesting they spent a long time developing and being used over and over again. Typical of every neural map I had seen.

"Let's not play with the important bits, shall we?"

She laughed. "What? You need calculus or something?"

I wagged a finger at her. "So how are we going to do this?"

"I have a plan." She held up a pair of glasses, which I took from her, slipping mine off and putting hers on.

"Ummm, so far not impressed."

"Try turning them on."

I did, a HUD appearing, waiting a prompt. "Augmented reality?"

"This pair, yes."

I pulled them off and looked at them. They reminded me of Google-glass, but far more stylish, closer to those fancy high-end gaming glasses. "Explain how this will be of any use to our project." I didn't want to come off as impatient, but I also wanted to get on with it.

"In a hurry to have me play in your brain?" She smirked, but I could see concern in her eyes.

"Not really, no, but I'm the only lab rat you have."

She waved for me to put them back on then picked up a sphere about eight inches in diameter to show me.

"What is that?"

"It does not have an official name yet, so we're calling it the Magic eight ball. It's a new gaming system I'm developing."

She turned it over so I could see the quarter sized flat spot on the bottom, then she set it on the floor and pressed an invisible button on the side, and suddenly I stood in the middle of a darkened forest. The HUD now showing me the various tools I had available, direction, and other information needed to make a decision in the game. "This is Garden, right?"

I rotated, the scene changing to show me standing on a path, the dirt even showing footprints as I shifted my feet, the pebbles and other detritus being disturbed by my movements. Looking up I could see the canopy of leaves overhead, a breeze shifting them and giving hints to the sunlight beyond them. "Do you have it paired with sound?"

"FRIDAY, if you would."

Suddenly I could hear the wind, the creaking of the branches, the call of birds and other animals in the forest I stood in. "Christ. Headphone option?" I couldn't see Rinn, or anything but the projection. Actually not true, but I had to focus and look beyond the realistic graphics. I took two careful steps forward and set the cup down on the desk I felt with my other hand.

"Bone induction, but yes."

I moved away from the desk, knowing the layout of the room, until standing in a spot with nothing within easy reach. Didn't want to trip over something if I managed to get too caught up in this fantasy. "This is a gaming system? When have you had time to work on this? And why?"

"Why?" she echoed, almost sneering. "How does it feel? Are you wearing five pounds of gear on your head? Do you have reasonable freedom of movement?"

"Laurin, this is amazing." Though I couldn't see how to use any of gear the HUD claimed I had access to. I lifted my hand to wave it about and managed to hit three of the prompts somehow. "Oh my. You've overlapped the augmented with the projected VR." I tapped the bag of holding, virtually of course, chose a weapon and found a sword before me. I took it into my right hand, not actually able to feel it, but it tracked my movements damn near perfectly. "Can you use a sim suit to enhance the sensation?"

"Working on it," she told him.

I found the prompt to power the system down, the room returning about me. I wasn't quite where I'd expected to be and turned to look at Rinn. "You are going to make a fortune with this."

"I already have a fortune."

I laughed. "Another one then. Gamers are going to go insane for this and… and tell me you plan to upgrade your sim systems to this?" I knew the answer.

"Once I've perfected it yes." She tipped her head. "Still have some challenges with movement tracking algorithm, but I'm close."

"You managed to get a three-sixty image, which is impressive since I should have been casting a shadow through part of the projection."

"The glasses fill it in for you. Handles the seams and overlaps. Plus you can ceiling mount and invert. All the controls can be activated remotely." No pride, just a surety that I had seen before. She knew when she'd gotten things right, when that vision she'd seen in her mind had become a reality.

I nodded. An excellent solution. "No bulky helmets. Full interaction. Even without a suit the gamers will fill in the appropriate sensations themselves. Multi-player function?"

"Yup. Can slave up to a half-dozen headsets together."

I picked up the projector. So much power in such a small space, plus the game and all the memory and obviously not plugged into a wall. "You just made my entire projection system obsolete."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"I meant it as one." The surface of the orb appeared to be solid, but clearly could not be given what I had just experienced. I wanted to take the damn thing apart and figure out how it worked so I could recreate it for my own abuse. I set it back down. "So how does that get a memory out of my head?"

"That one, won't. This one, however…" She pulled a case out from under the desk and opened it. Inside lay another pair of glasses, an orb, and what looked like a modified neural net.

"You've managed to integrate it with my BARF already?" I took the case from her, set it down and pulled out the glasses. They were noticeably heavier than the gaming pair, but with the same look. There were small sensors on the earpieces that I would bet fit into sections on the neural net. The projector would allow her to see the memory, and that would assist in the targeting and removal.

"You sound surprised."

"Well you have been busy, trying to get kidnapped and calling in SHIELD to rescue you."

She frowned, but I suppose that was better than her yelling at me and storming off. We did have work to do, but I also had been worried about her. Especially after hearing the harrowing tales third or even fourth hand.

"You could have called me."

"You have a dungeon here? One that does not include BDSM gear, that is?"

That pulled a surprised snort of amusement from me. I had my kinky side, most people did, but I had never really gotten into the the whole dom/sub thing. I liked to be in charge and rarely gave up that sense of control I'd fought so hard for. "You do, but I suspect you use it for other, far less fun things."

She snorted. "You'd be right. And I did consider calling you, but…"

"But you didn't want Ross involved. I get that, but I could have taken him to the compound." I swear I knew her answer before she said it.

"That's Avengers territory, which means Ross would have found out." She shook her head. "It was not personal, Tony. Even Maria would not have been able to keep it a secret, especially if Vision caught wind of it. Hell, I'm shocked he hasn't ratted me out yet."

Kind of surprised me as well given he had access to all that JARVIS had been. Maybe because she had stayed uninvolved, mostly, in the actions Rogers and company had taken. Her harbouring fugitives seemed to bother no one over much including the Secretary of State. They'd already done what they could to her and had failed utterly to scare her into behaving, instead they'd driven her and her resources away. They would never see this new tech except from afar.

"Then why does it feel personal?" I muttered, pacing away. We had work to do and I shouldn't be rehashing events that had taken place weeks ago. Events I hadn't been involved with in any way.

"Jeez, Tony, if you'd been nearby instead of SHIELD, I would have called you. But since I was already meeting with FitzSimmons it seemed to be the path of least resistance. And he's a dead end anyway." She came to stand beside me and set her chin on my shoulder.

"Why a dead end?" I asked, resisting the urge to meet her eyes and seeing the concern certain to be in them.

"Huh. So you know I went to SHIELD, but you did didn't follow up after? I'm shocked, Tony, just shocked."

I sighed, giving in to gaze into those green eyes of hers. "Even I have my limits."

"Since when? He ended up dead, mere hours after getting back to the US. Coulson was pissed."

"How?"

"Sniper during transfer. He was human so they weren't worried about having to cage or amber him. Plus it was kind of off book anyway."

"They traced the bullet?"

"Wasn't one. It… fell apart for lack of a better description. Some metallic residue but nothing of use. I got more from his phone and the tracker used."

"Say the word and Iron Man will make a visit to TJ and he'll never be a problem for you again."

She kissed my cheek. "Thank you, but I've got it handled."

"You had Barnes with you and he still got to you. You call that handled?"

She pulled away. "Do not go there, Tony. You will not blame Barnes for a situation he had zero control over."

I ducked my head for a moment, wanting to argue the point, except she was right. Now way either of them could have known TJ had come back into her life just to drug and possibly kidnap her. "I can help you take control back. I don't want to see you hurt."

"Too late on that score," she muttered, cringing when she realized I'd heard her.

No way I could keep my mouth shut after that slip. "Damn it, Laurin, who hurt you?"

She shook her head. "I'm a big girl, Tony, I can deal with it, promise. Could use some assistance tracking down the creator of the tech though."

Tossing me a bone that I would probably grasp onto like a lifeline. I wanted to argue, wanted to protect her, but given her stubbornness she would walk away and not talk to me for several months. Not how I envisioned this going, so I dropped it. "Whatever you need," I told her, meaning it.

She nodded, still tense, but willing to try and let it go for the sake of whatever amount of friendship we had left. "Have you eaten yet?"

I shook my head. I hadn't gotten much of my coffee either thanks to her.

"You should. Nothing too heavy though. Then we get to play with the toys and see how badly it fries your brain."

I narrowed my eyes at her. "I need the brain intact."

"Pffft. Not like you need more money. You could retire today and live better than many countries for the rest of your life."

I rubbed my eyes with one hand before leveling a glare at her. "Just for that, you're cooking."

"Extra spicy huevos rancheros it is." She rubbed her hands together, a gleeful smile of pure evil on her face.

I groaned, regretting my words already. "FRIDAY, save me."

" _No way, boss, you walked right into that one. Shall I start some more coffee_?"

Rinn chuckled. "Please, FRIDAY." She sidled up to me and hooked her arm around mine. "C'mon, I'll walk you through the plan while we eat."

. . .

We'd dragged one of the chairs from the lounge into the lab for me to sit in. More like Rinn had. I knew how heavy the damn thing was, given it had taken two beefy delivery men to get it into the building and in place, and she simply picked it up as if it had been a cheap, plastic folding chair and this bingo night at the local church. Not that there was a local church, or that I'd been anywhere near one in an exceedingly long time. Last time had been for my parents' funeral. I had no interest in going back.

In the suit I could have lifted the chair just as easily, but not the man. The man a weak shell compared to the suit. I wore the armour for a reason. Wished I could talk her into doing so as well. But she didn't want armour, didn't want the kind of protection I could give to her. Wanted to make her own way in the world, the wind in her hair sun on her face and all the risks inherent with it.

She might be young, but she'd lived hard long before I'd met her.

Maybe that made her brave.

Didn't stop me from wanting to make certain she lived to the ripe old age of thirty.

With the enemies she'd been collecting lately she might not make it to her next birthday.

"Hey, we don't have to do this now."

I blinked up at her, wondering how long I'd been lost in thought. "Yeah, we do."

She looked me over with a gimlet eye, trying to see within me, so I plastered on my stubborn face and waited. "Fine. But the slightest discomfort and-"

I set my hand over hers. "I know the risks and I've agreed to help. Let me."

"You sweet talker, you."

I grinned. "Let's see how badly you've ruined my BARF."

"Ruined. I'll give you ruined," she muttered, making a few minute adjustments to the gear I wore. I wore a heart rate and blood pressure monitor as a precaution. She stepped back, looking over the main computer screen, then picked up the tablet she'd actually be controlling the system with. Her mini Death Star - she'd nixed the idea for that name due to trademark reasons - sat on the floor about two feet in front of me. "I've modified the integration so you will see me overlaid on the projection. This doesn't require full immersion I don't think."

"Less talking more testing," I grumbled, my heart rate already slightly elevated.

"You pick the first memory," she told me. "FRIDAY, you recording?"

" _Of course, why else would I be watching this."_

Rinn cocked an eyebrow at the tone the not quite an AI had achieved then grinned. "I like your smart mouthed computer."

"You like her, you can keep her. I'm sure I have a replacement that won't talk back quite so much." I actually liked the sass, had programmed it that way, but the idea of giving Rinn one of my other butler programs one I hadn't considered before. Though knowing her, she had been developing her own without telling me. Still it could be of serious use to her and give me a subtle way of keeping tabs on her. Protecting her without being overt about it.

The computer snorted, but refrained from comment.

I chose a mostly innocuous memory: my first meeting with Rinn at the airfield, just before she'd proven an actual glitch existed in my fighter jet programming. The younger Rinn looking damn near identical to the one standing before me. The haircut different, but little else. She looked like she hadn't aged a day in the near decade I had known her. How very… odd.

"Wow, I really wasn't impressed by you at all."

"Not a bit," I agreed, "but you had a right to be, given I'd killed two of your family members."

"I thought we determined the error had been due to aftermarket mods done once you'd turned in the code. Adjustments made by others."

"Approved by me. Therefore my fault." Never mind the fact that as the designer, programmer and, you know, boss, the responsibility fell on my shoulders either way. I was in charge, I said yes to the mods, I killed her father and brother. And she… she had found the problem, devised a solution, and saved the lives of others who might encounter the same unique situation. I'd redone the programming for the next generation and then killed the project, only offering to maintain the current models so long as they were flight worthy. Her method of recovery now a standard part of the training for those who flew that particular model.

She shook her head, but wisely said nothing. We'd had this argument before and it always ended at a stalemate. She'd blamed me for a fair portion of her life to that point, the fact that she'd also been able to forgive had sealed the deal. "Would you change anything about how we met?"

I shook my head. "Not a second of it."

That earned me a real smile. "How do you feel? Headache, nausea?"

"I'm good. There's a… buzz from the neural net, but that's about it."

"That means I got the calibration within acceptable parameters."

"You'll have to recalibrate for every individual?" Made sense actually. Least for this detailed a probing.

"Yep. But with something this… dangerous, I don't see how else to accomplish it. A generic base map won't be able to target specific memories."

What she didn't say was what you _could_ target, and that would be the broad items, time sense, general emotions, base reactions like fight or flight. She could alter the brain of _anyone_ if this worked. Take away pain or fear or anger, possibly permanently. And the implications were far reaching. What if with a tweak of a neuron or two she could turn off the Hulk. Or control the pain of a surgical patient without potentially life threatening drugs.

"Rinn-"

"I know, Tony, but let's get through step one before we look at the implications of step one hundred, okay?"

There were a thousands things I wanted to say, a thousand more I wanted to ask, but instead I simply said, "You have a very dangerous mind."

She smiled brightly and said, "Thank you," complete with a tiny curtsy. She swiped across the tablet and the scene surrounding us vanished. "All right, I'm gonna poke that big bright one like we discussed. You ready?"

I leaned back into the chair and set on ankle on the opposite knee, going for casual and utterly bored by the whole experience. "Sure," I agreed with a lazy wave of my hand.

She tapped the screen and I tried to not swallow my tongue at the memory projected about me. That dream, that _vision_ of my greatest fear, of failing everyone I ever gave a damn about. I sat there frozen unable to look away as it played through to the end. Cap's last words hitting me hard enough that it felt as if my heart had stopped dead.

"Holy shit," Rinn whispered hoarsely, and that caused everything to zoom back into place. The heart rate and blood pressure monitors both giving off soft warnings informing me of what I already knew: a panic attack.

"Not this one," I repeated over and over again without realizing it.

Rinn was there then. Her hands over my icy cold ones. "Tony, I had no idea. I'm so sorry. I'll make it go-"

"No," I shouted, eyes focusing on her instead of the dead body of Captain America lying on a heap of all the other dead. The representation of the world I had failed to protect from the coming danger. I met her eyes, mine probably wild, whites surely prominent, hands shaking as I gripped tightly to hers. "I need to keep this one."

"Okay. Okay. I won't touch it."

"Promise me," I yelled at her, though it sounded far more like begging to my ears.

"I promise." She freed one hand and tapped the screen, banishing the memory to, well, my memory. Without a word or instant of hesitation she pulled me into a hug, where I shook and shivered and shuddered, but didn't cry damn it.

Tony Stark does not fucking cry.

"Who the hell did this to you?" she asked softly, words coming out raw and pained.

Without pulling away I answered, "Maximoff. During that Ultron mess." I held tighter for an instant, earning a grunt of actual discomfort from her. "My greatest fear, apparently."

She cupped my face in her hands and encouraged me to look up at her, wiping the tears I had not shed, dammit, from my cheeks. "Tell me you've talked to someone about this."

I sighed, hands coming to rest on her hips, wanting to push her away, but lacking the energy to do so at the moment. "Of course. All the time, but no one _listens_."

"And how exactly are you talking to them? That whole, 'remember the time I flew into a wormhole and saved New York from a nuke' tale?"

I nodded, wondering where the hell she was going with this. How else do you talk to people about something so all encompassing. Rogers had been right, mostly, I had never been the one to make the sacrifice play, until that day when there had been no one else to do it.

Find a way to make the miracle happen? Yeah, I could, and had, done that in my sleep. But actually play the part of action hero? No, not me for a hot second.

World peace in our time, what a joke. I'd simply been righting the wrongs I'd committed unknowingly, by allowing others to run my company and forgetting words like oversight had actual importance.

The moment I'd cared for something beyond myself my entire existence had changed.

For the better?

That had yet to be decided.

"Well, yes."

She frowned slightly and shook her head. "You realize to everyone else it sounds like you're just stroking your own ego, not asking for help?"

"All I do these days is stroke my own ego," I pointed out, trying for the tried and true innuendo and failing miserably.

She ignored the words and instead kissed me gently on the forehead. "I'm so sorry, Tony."

"What do you have to be sorry for?" I buried my forehead into her stomach. "None of this was your fault."

"My fault I didn't listen better. Rhodey listens, doesn't he?"

She sounded so concerned for me, and I had to admit, if reluctantly, it had been a long time since someone had. Even Pepper had been more concerned about how my being an Avenger affected her, a justified concern, don't get me wrong, than what it had done to me. Blowing up all those suits had turned out to be nothing more than a token gesture. Not long after I'd gone right back to my tinkering. Playing with the toys I created for the Avengers and then Ultron happened.

Good idea. Poor execution.

Of course, no way I could have known the mind gem was a borderline living creature. Vision might be the possessor of it, but even he had no understanding of it. It held more than power and, much like Thor, I agreed that the appearance of so many of these Infinity Stones could in no way be good. And that often led me to wonder if that vision Wanda had given me to be exactly that, a prescient view of what would be to come unless we changed something in the here and now.

That was what I feared more than anything. That I would fail to protect the ones who meant the most to me, that I would have to watch them die one by one, their decaying corpses piling up all around me while I nothing I did, nothing I tried amounted to anything of value.

All my work, all the _good_ I had tried to do useless.

"Rhodey has his own problems to deal with right now."

She nodded slowly and stepped back, freeing me to get up and pace about the room, the adrenaline still coursing through me, but the need to run, to escape had eased.

"How bad?"

I shrugged. "Bad enough."

"Do you want to talk to someone?" she asked and I glanced over my shoulder at her.

"Who? Who would listen. Hell, who can I trust?" All of it so classified in so many ways that I doubted there could be anyone out there with the necessary clearance, and that's before getting into the risks of them being a spy of some sort for any of the other _teams_ out there. AIM, Hydra, Ten Rings. TMZ. All of them very real and very dangerous.

"Sam."

"Wilson? He's grown just as bored of the stories as the rest of them," I scoffed.

"Perhaps," she agreed, "but he dealt with PTSD in veterans. If you approached him with that in mind, I know he will listen and understand."

She might have a point with perception being the key to my talking to Wilson, arranging it could be an issue though. "I wouldn't want to have to arrest him."

She ran her hands through her hair, frowning deeply. "Okay, I'll see what I can arrange with my more than slightly overbooked schedule. I should be able to manage four days every month where I can be here… or wherever you are. Deal is you have to give me that time too. Barring world ending events that require Iron Man's attention."

I blinked at her, not certain what the hell she was talking about. "Laurin, if this works," I waved at the room about us, "it'll be done. Project complete except for tweaking and expanding and maybe marketing."

"Dense. So very dense," she muttered, shaking her head at me. "To talk, Tony. I'm reasonably certain you trust me and, while not a psychologist by any stretch of the imagination, I'll… we'll figure it out together."

"You'd do that?" Yeah, I sounded shocked as all hell. "This is a burden you shouldn't have to take on," I warned her, then, at the look on her face, realized it was nothing more than another attempt to push her away. Push them all away out of anger and pain and fear of rejection. "Thank you," I managed, head down, casting my gaze to the floor, so I damn near jumped out of my skin when she set a hand on my shoulder. I met her eyes, not sure what she could read in mine.

She began removing the hardware I'd completely forgotten about.

"Hey, we still have work to do."

"Yep, just not right now. I need a break after that even if you don't." I let her finish removing the modified neural net and glasses. She set them on the table next to the computer and tablet.

"Oh, you're gonna make me talk about that now, aren't you." The fact that I remained reluctant to discuss what I had experienced in that dream pretty much assured that I needed to actually discuss what I had experienced. Feelings and all.

"Over a cup of hot tea or three."

I made a face. "You hate me."

"Scotch then?"

I snorted. "Now you're speaking my language."

. . .

So, yeah, I ended up drinking tea. Chamomile tea. I'd had worse things in my life, and a splash or two of whiskey would have livened it up a bit, but I had to admit it did it's job at soothing my abused mind and body. I had no clue where the tea had come from. Pepper hadn't exactly spent a whole lot of time here before we'd parted ways, long enough to leave her mark, I supposed.

Rinn sat right beside me, doing all the right things, saying all the right words, and meaning them. She had never been the emotional type, not really. The only time I'd seen it was when an EMP had shut down her nanobots and caused her symptoms to return. She'd been terrified, but even then, for the most part she'd put on a brave face and kept going. Working the problem instead of wallowing, especially around me. Granted, she might have simply wanted to impress me since I knew damn well she'd broken down and dampened the shoulder of Rogers more than once.

Why she felt she could do that with him and not me… okay, so I wasn't big on the dealing with emotional situations, not even my own, and I had known she was well and truly freaked out what with the whole threat of dying a decidedly painful death looming ahead of her if we couldn't get those damn 'bots turned back on.

But she had also trusted me to be there, to see it through, knew that if anyone could help her, it would be me. We'd done it together, but she had never once doubted I would be there for her.

"You and your sledgehammers," she mused, shaking her head.

"What? I have the ability to do this, to protect the world, if I don't…" Damn that kid. He'd been more right than he could ever comprehend. "If I could stop it, the next big bad, by… inventing a way to protect the whole world and don't? If I just sit on it instead? Then it's my fault."

She sipped at her tea, clearly thinking over my words. "But if you do it carelessly, without taking into consideration all the potential ramifications of your _solution_ and things go horribly wrong, then _you are to blame._ "

Which is exactly what had happened with Ultron. So she did have a point.

"If I wait on a committee or panel to decide it could be too late." Just look at how well the Avengers had been doing lately. Major incidents around the world, some looking to be terrorist actions of one stripe or another and, by the time that Panel finally managed to convene, Rogers and his rogues already onsite and begun cleaning up the mess. France, that train station, had been the last straw for me, so when Rinn had called, laid on the guilt trip nice and thick, I hadn't hesitated, using it as the perfect excuse to do what I should have been all along, saving lives. I'd suited up and been out the door mere minutes later and hang Ross and his threats.

A bomb at a major train station and he thinks it's not worth investigating either before or after? Idiot. And worse, a fucking fool. Turning a blind eye to the potential danger because he didn't want to deal with facing down more enhanced. Granted the US government had fallen down a steep slope with the Inhuman Registration Act. The fallout from the Accords had impacted far more people than I had ever imagined or intended. I could just imagine Rogers biased opinions on the matter.

Then again, if discovered, the woman sitting across from me could, and most likely would, be forced to sign or _retire._ Not that she'd ever really been involved in the whole superhero aspect of the missions she had gone on. She would still be considered an enhanced and forced to follow their rules and guidelines or face sanctions.

She would be her usual stubborn self and probably join Nomad solely to piss Ross off. Hell, she'd lead the fucking charge just to prove her point.

"Tony, you can't make decisions for the whole planet. That's why we have the Accords, remember?" She set the cup down, watching me with care as she chose he words with even more. "I mean, you _can_ , obviously. How'd that turn out?"

I frowned. "Thought you were supposed to be listening," I complained with no little bitterness.

She huffed in irritation at me. "You have to listen too. That's how this works, Mr. Sledge."

I scrubbed my hands over my face wishing the tea was vodka about now.

"Having seen that memory, I understand where you are coming from, and agree that you are quite possibly the only person on this planet who could pull off saving it in toto. Doesn't mean you should though."

Wait. She didn't want the world saved? What the hell? "Laurin-"

" _I'm sorry to interrupt but Miss Cyrelle's phone had been ringing in almost non-stop for the last ten minutes, so I'm guessing it's urgent, do I have permission to intercept the call and patch it through_?"

"Sure FRIDAY."

" _Rinn? You there_?"

"Steve? What's up?" Her brow furrowed, trying to keep her tone light, but Rogers had been extremely off, sounding exhausted and in pain.

" _Uh, we kind of got blown up. I'm okay-ish, but Buck's a mess._ "

"Son of bitch," Rinn muttered under her breath. "I told you to be careful. Where the hell are you?"

I tapped the smartwatch on my wrist. "FRIDAY, what's he talking about?" It took a few seconds but FRIDAY magically found video of our beloved Captain strolling down the streets of Brooklyn with his best buddy at his side. A few skips in the timeline, most of the video procured from local CCTV and security cams, showed them standing before a building, staring at something on the ground before it dissolved into static then darkness. "What is that?"

Rinn had leaned over to see what I was doing. "Crossbones… Rumlow. It was another fucking trap," she growled. "I'll be in the air as soon as I can."

" _Thank you_ ," Steve sounded both relieved and desperate. " _We're heading back to the quinjet now._ "

I sucked in a deep breath and did the right thing. "Go to the Tower. She'll meet you there."

" _Tony_?" Steve sounded shocked that I had even responded.

"Hey. I know she doesn't have medical facilities back at the castle, so go to the Tower."

Rinn stared at me as if I had gone more than slightly nuts. Well, more than usual anyway. "You sure?"

I nodded. "Positive."

"Steve. Go. I'll be there as fast as I can. We'll let the medical staff know you are en route."

The heavy sigh of relief could be easily heard over the intervening distance. " _Thank you._ " Then he disconnected leaving me and Rinn watching each other in an odd combination of surprise and concern.

"Any chance you have a quinjet here?" she asked, getting straight to the heart of the current matter.

"Of course. FRIDAY start the pre-flight."

Rinn jumped to her feet. "I gotta grab my tablet and phone. I'll meet you there."

In that moment I kind of hated her, knowing she would jump at Rogers' command without a second of hesitation no matter how stupid or lame of a reason. I cringed realizing exactly how selfish of me that thought had been. I'd seen her do the damn same thing for me, and hadn't she just offered to make time in her excessively busy schedule to do what she could to help me? Not with work, but to be there as a friend?

She had, but the fact that she _lived_ with Steve still gnawed at me. I'd offered to put her up at the Tower any number of times, but she had always turned me down. Rogers and I get into one little fight and she's playing host to him and his runaway Avengers.

Not ever once glancing my way.

And that _hurt_ , apparently.

"FRIDAY, let the Tower know to expect visitors and have a suit ready for me."

" _Of course, boss. Perhaps now might be a good time to speak to Captain Rogers_?" she suggested and I felt my back stiffen, instantly going on the defensive.

"Why would I do that?" I responded going for jaunty dismissal and probably overshooting the target by a wide margin given the dead silence that followed from my normally smart-mouthed computer.

" _Oh, no reason_ ," she finally muttered. " _You might want to hurry or Miss Cyrelle will leave without you._ "

Of course she would be in a hurry, not only was a friend in trouble, but he had been hurt. So why did I want nothing more than to drag my feet in a vindictive visceral need to let the pain and suffering drag out as long as possible?

Because I remained angry and hurt, so why not make certain everyone around me suffered the same undesirable fate.

No, today would not be the day I spoke to Rogers. Might not be able to manage that for quite some time yet.

That wound had yet to heal.

Still raw and oozing blood about the edges.

For Rinn sake, however, I would play the gallant and assist as much as my bruised and battered ego would permit me.

Yeah, I still hurt, but I didn't have to be an asshole about it.

"Tell her not to take off without me."

FRIDAY chuckled. " _Then you better hurry. She's already overriding safety functions to push the quinjet to it's potential. She writes code faster than you when motivated_."

I grumbled under my breath, made sure I had my phone and ran for the hangar.

. . .

NOTE: This chapter takes place _after_ Chapter 23 of _the only hero left._

 _. . ._

I barely spoke to Rinn at the Tower since she had chosen to spend her time with Thing 1 and Thing 2 and though I had wanted to try, with Thing 1 anyway, quickly discovered I couldn't, not yet ready to face my friend and the hurt and distance that had been created between us.

I relayed any questions or messages through FRIDAY and hid in my lab until told that they had left in their quinjet, which I had been kind enough to permit them to keep given they'd stolen it from me… from the Avengers, heading back to their castle and the vendetta Rumlow had for them.

Did I feel more than a touch put out?

Oh, fuck yes.

My own fault, in reality. I'd told them to come to the Tower then spent hours cleaning up their mess. Rinn hadn't given me the details on the injuries; though she had seemed upset about how badly they had been hurt, especially Thing 2, which I vindictively relished, though I had tried to hide it from Rinn. She took it in stride though, understanding that the time had not come to breach the rift that had formed between me and Rogers, especially with the reason for said rift in the building and my fingers twitching with the urge to wrap about the man's throat and choke the life out of him the way he had my mother.

I had the done the right thing in offering the Tower facilities to them.

I knew that. Believed that.

So why did I also regret it.

If Rinn hadn't been there I doubted I would have lifted a finger. Permitting the proper authorities to do their jobs while going about my business. Probably completely unaware they'd been nearby much less put in harm's way.

Though dealing with this Crossbones had become a necessity. At least the target had become clear, even if that knowledge did the general populace little good. Used as bait and made into victims just on the off chance Rogers would show up and deign to be killed. Whoever this madman might be, he fucking hated Steve Rogers and woe betide anyone who got in the way of him and his target.

And this time it had hit close to home, literally. One of them anyway. Time to take a more proactive approach in dealing with it. Last I checked the train station investigation had stalled, or what they were willing to tell me had stalled, and now the same symbol here in Brooklyn and more people dead and hurt.

Yeah, time to light a fire under Ross's ass to take this seriously.

But that could wait a day or two while FRIDAY compiled enough evidence for me to take to Ross, Rinn and I still had a project to complete. One that had far reaching implications that I had yet to touch upon with her.

She settled into the pilot's seat, running through the pre-flight as a matter of habit. FRIDAY had already made certain the quinjet had been prepared, but given Rinn had been a pilot for a vast part of her life, the routine had become ingrained, like muscle memory. She could skip it if pressed for time, like the flight here, but now, with no great rush, she took the time to do things the properly.

I pretended to doze, fingers laced together on my stomach, until I felt the 'jet lift into the air and gather speed, heading back to the mansion I currently resided in when avoiding the Tower and the Compound.

"You can stop faking now," Rinn informed me and I cracked open an eye in time to see her swing the chair about, one blonde eyebrow cocked high on her forehead, the green of her eyes sparkling in amusement.

"I wasn't faking. I was truly avoiding watching your horrible take off."

She pshawed, which I found highly amusing. "My take off was smooth as silk, like always."

"Exactly, no fun if you do it perfectly right every single time." She saw the words as the challenge they were, her eyes narrowing even as a grin ticked the corners of her lips up for an instant.

"Nice try, but I know you have about a million questions you want to ask now that I'm not with the boys."

 _Boys_? Is that how she saw them? As her boys? Interesting given they had decades on her in age, never mind experience. She still saw them as equals, and given they were very close in age if you ignored the time frozen, I could see making sense. But then why did she and I get along so well? It had never made any real sense, but I tried to not examine the reasons behind it too deeply lest the friendship we had fall apart. Friends had become fewer and fewer over the years, so I endeavored to not push any more away.

"You mean Thing 1 and Thing 2?"

She snorted, actually finding that funny and not pretending to ease the sting of her spending so much time with them in the last twenty-four or so hours. "Yes, that's who I mean." Then she tipped her head down a wistful look on her face. "He wasn't ready either."

I released a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding, finding an odd sort of relief in those words. "Christ, we are all kinds of fucked up."

"So it would appear," she agreed, not happy about it, but not about to push us together to fix things either. She probably believed the rift would heal in time, either because we both realized the value of the other, or out of necessity. "How many were hurt?"

"Dozens, but no one killed thankfully." I would place even money she'd had FRIDAY fill in everything of importance from the news coverage, she simply wanted to give me the opportunity to ask my questions without feeling like I had to make the first step. "That EMP completely trashed all the electronics in the area. In fact we think that's what caused the car explosions."

"System overloaded?"

I nodded. "They found no signs of explosives on any of the cars, just in the building." I ground my teeth for a moment then screwed up the courage to ask. "What was the damage?"

She made sure to not react, no smile, no relief, no reaction whatsoever. "Aside from the usual collection of scrapes and bruises, Steve had broken ribs and a mild concussion. James kidney damage and a broken collarbone. Plus the EMP fried his arm."

Ouch. Breaks hurt, but collarbones were at the top of the pain list. "Were you able to get it functional?"

"About thirty percent. It would almost be simpler to remove it and do a full reboot, but I'll see what I can do with it still in place first. He'll be miserable until I get back, but the bone has to heal first anyway." She paused as if waiting for me to make some sneering comment, and I had to admit one or two floated up from the depths, but I played the part and kept them inside. "Why are you helping me with this project if you still hate him so much?"

I resisted the urge to sigh or glare at her. "I'm am not ready to talk about this."

"Tony-"

"It's not for him, okay?" I snapped, knowing she would just keep pushing until I gave her something and the answer wasn't a lie, per se, but it most certainly wasn't the whole truth by any stretch of the imagination.

She seemed to get that I would not say another word and just gave me a nod. "Okay."

Then I set about changing the subject even though we'd be, in some ways, talking about the exact same subject. "You understand why I created the BARF?"

She nodded. "Though there are days I wonder if you do."

I rolled my eyes. "Don't push those buttons today, please." I forced humor into my tone and she responded to it, though I could see in her eyes it had been just as forced. She wanted me to talk through this instead of try to fix it the only way I knew how, thinking that building things would not get me any closer to that end game I longed for. "You believe information can be plugged into the human brain, why?"

She shrugged. "It makes sense."

"That's not an answer," I griped, I knew it made sense, I had watched it happen when we'd uploaded JARVIS to the artificial body that had become Vision. "A human brain is not a computer, you can't just upload a program and hit run and have it work." The look on her face decried otherwise. "Or can you?"

"I have no hard proof, but yes, I believe you can." So serious, so excited, so fucking scary if true.

"And you think this is how they created the Winter Soldier?" I'd done my homework too. Those files available to anyone who wanted to take the time to plow through them.

"Yes and no. Look, we estimate James had been awake maybe a total of five years since taken by Hydra - prior to the incident in DC."

"So?"

"So, how did he learn all those skills in such a small span of time. Yes, Sgt. James Barnes had been an excellent soldier and sniper in his day, but he's kept up with every bit of tech the world has created since 1944. He can fly pretty much anything, drive a variety of land and sea vehicles. Fire pretty much any weapon you can think of, has fighting skills that freak out some of the best on the planet and he's only been awake a few years?"

"That's not possible."

"Exactly," she agreed with a vigorous nod. "So how did it get in there? And these are skills that can take decades to learn properly and they have been ingrained, pure muscle memory. Yes, I'm certain the serum helped, primed him for lack of a better term, but still… any single one of the dozen martial arts he's mastered would still take years to learn and perfect. I've talked to Steve and he agrees with me. Learning the basics can be very easy for him, but putting it into practice? There's a reason he trains daily."

Okay, she had a point, a good one, but the hows of it were missing. "But, with Barnes anyway, they wiped his mind regularly, are you saying they uploaded skills every time too?" Not efficient, but possible. Make more sense to retain the old skills and only upload new as needed.

"Keep in mind this is best guesses only."

I nodded, urging her to continue.

"I've seen photos of the mind wipe machine and, based on my neural map research, the areas it targets would wipe personality, not skills."

Made sense, but… "Wait you're saying Hydra figured out how to target specific areas of the brain in the forties? I don't buy it."

She shook her head. "Not till the sixties at a best guess."

"Why do you think that?" I asked, trying to see that leap of logic she had without her spelling it out for me.

"Zola died in seventy-two. He had to figure out how to transfer his… consciousness before that."

Son of a bitch. "And to do that he would have to map his brain, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. But he had Barnes well before then, are you saying they iced him for twenty-plus years before using him?"

"Yes and no. Barnes was captured in early '45 and damn near died. They spent months getting him healthy and…"

"And playing with his head."

"Plus the serum. We know he'd been enhanced prior to be rescued at the Valkyrie facility. We, meaning SHIELD and, such since those files are still missing, believe Zola used him to test some serums that were based on the one used on Schmidt. Zola didn't get involved with him again, the actual start of the Winter Soldier Project, until well after the war and SHIELD had been created. Zola ostensibly working for them. And there's no _official_ record of… of an assassination by the Winter Soldier till the sixties."

"You've really done your homework haven't you?"

"Of course. I had to understand how they created him if I had any hope of altering the programming. Zola had a brilliant mind, he just didn't care who he hurt to make his toys a reality."

For a second I thought that was a shot aimed at me and my sometimes forgetting the down side of my creations, but the look in her eyes told me otherwise. "So they created the Soldier the old fashioned way."

"So it would appear. Trouble was Barnes refused to remain quiet. He'd fight the programming."

"Once Zola figured out how to transfer his mind out he knew how to put stuff in as well," I summed up.

"As well as where to target to remove unnecessary bits, like the original personality."

"So how did Barnes stick around?"

"I suspect due to the serum. His healing factor could play a part. I can't say with any certainty, but he'd been enhanced well before they tried to erase him. Even with the more traditional brainwashing he probably fought them at every turn."

But those fights would never last long; once they began the code phrases he would be lost. And he would know exactly what was happening even as his mind shut down and locked him, James Barnes, into his cage. "Once they figured out how to wipe him it became easier. But the skills, if the wipe machine only targets the personality…"

She shrugged. "Without one in front of me to play with I can't be sure. Those files have not been released to the public so I cannot say with any certainty if the same machine was used or another one. I'm still digging into the released files for confirmation."

"Do you ever slow down?"

"Do you?"

"Touche." I tapped the armrest pondering the implications. There could be a computer out there somewhere with a default Winter Soldier on it, all the skills, all the compliance and none of the emotional baggage. Just plug and play with the right tools and an army of uncaring assassins could be running loose. "And you've managed to recreate the whole shebang in just a few months."

Her lips pressed into a thin line, but she nodded just once. "Never mind the fact that I made copies of Barnes' neural map, both before and after the programming has been switched on."

 _Well, shit._ If there were the slightest chance they could be used to recreate the experiment… that… well, that would be one huge-ass problem.

"Does anyone besides me know this?"

"No. I think Steve suspects, but I've not given him the details since we've yet to confirm it works."

"Oh it will." That much I knew with a certainty that concerned me. "Do you intend to record skills to share with others?"

Her eyes widened, response enough.

"And they say I push the boundaries."

"Tony, that's not… no, that is fair. Do I see that potential with my work? Yes, how could I not. But I can also see the danger. This could be abused so easily and with such horribly tragic results." She tipped her head down shaking it. "After this, after giving James his life back I might just destroy all of it."

I found that hard to believe. This tech could be so useful, teaching people new skills in mere days instead of months or years. "But the world could benefit from this now."

"Benefit or abuse?"

Urf. She had a point. "Plug and play languages for that busy exec who doesn't have time for Rosetta Stone."

"Slacker college students uploading physics to pass an exam, but with no real understanding of the science," she sneered. "I'd make a lot of money and the exam stealing would go out of fashion."

"You'd make nothing, someone would clone the tech and sell it for pennies on the dollar to anyone willing to pay."

She snorted, but didn't argue. "And when the government tries to take it? Citing training purposes or some other seemingly reasonable reason?"

I scrubbed one hand over my face, getting her reasoning, her argument. It could be abused so easily. Of course, she should not have made it so simple to use. Plug and play indeed. Pair this with the mind wipe tech and an entire army of mindless _deadly_ drones could be created. Truly perfect soldiers with no conscience to get in the way. They would follow orders and nothing more.

They already had the mind wipe machine from Siberia and all the files that went with it. "Can anyone get access to your neural maps?"

"Sure. Everyone who has a sim system has access to the neural maps of those fitted for suits. That's how it works. But they don't have the ability to create new ones. That is not part of the system at their end. Half the simulator systems I've sold don't use the full suit, just the immersion videos. Too expensive."

That still left a whole lot of people, especially the US government with access to her neural maps, and while not nearly as smart as either of us they still had people who could potentially figure out how to reverse engineer her toys. Granted it would be a tad more difficult than recreating a gun or a modern suit of armour. "Could you build an arc reactor?"

She took the time to actually think before responding. "Possibly. I understand the theory, but would need to do some homework before attempting it. And by homework I don't mean hacking your system and downloading the designs."

I grinned for an instant. "Could your neural interface be recreated the same way?"

Her look went blank, that damn near perfect poker face sliding into place and hiding every potential emotion that could be read by me.

"And that's a yes. Damn it. Did they get his? Did they get Barnes' map when they hit that server in Wakanda?" She'd kept me on the edges of the loop on those events. It had taken her a few weeks to find the common denominator and it made me believe Hydra might still be alive even with the hierarchy wiped out by SHIELD. They were a plague and could survive in even the most untenable of environments, kind of like cockroaches that way. There might be no way to stomp out all of them, but we could at least try to keep them under control.

"Yes," she stated bluntly, "among a host of others."

"You need to tell Rogers," I all but barked at her. The implications, the potential horrors that could come out of this made all the pain come back to the fore.

"He knows, we've been working on tracking down those behind it."

"By yourselves?"

She shrugged. "Didn't need or want to involve anyone else. Well, okay, we keep T'Challa informed since his people were killed in one of the explosions, but Steve and I are more than capable of handling this."

I had never intended to insinuate they weren't, but she seemed prepared to argue the point when I made it. "You wanted to keep it quiet."

"Need to. I won't apologize for doing what I think is right."

Ouch. "You've been hanging around Rogers too much."

She chuckled, but there was an undertone of pain to it. "Tell me about it," she muttered. "I had to trust someone."

I cocked an eyebrow at her. "What am I, chopped liver?"

"Goose pate," she corrected. "Tony, I couldn't stay in the US. Even if I had pretended to play nice and come to live at the Tower, the demands would have continued. It's my life, my company, and I'll run both the way I want."

"They gave you the my way or the highway speech?"

"Essentially."

I hadn't known that. I knew her family had turned into a bunch of asshats and shut her out of their lives, which kind of explained her clinging to those friends she trusted even if they were of the superhero stripe. Overall Rogers could be trusted even if he did keep secrets when he shouldn't. "I could always pull up stakes and move elsewhere," I suggested, though, admittedly, only half serious at best. "There are Stark facilities all over the world."

"Yeah, that'd go over well with Ross," she sneered. "He'd throw you in the Raft till you decided to be a team player again."

"You'd get me out." Meaning Rogers in actuality.

"Only if we knew about it."

"Wow, you have a really low opinion of Ross, don't you?" Not that I blamed her. The man, Secretary of State of these great United States, had made any number of mistakes over the years, especially when a general and attempting to create a team of his own enhanced. His efforts at _recruiting_ Banner had been utter failures and had done nothing more than alienate the man instead.

"He's given me no reason to like him." I could sense a novel's worth of words behind that statement, but I doubted she would share with me, since I was _one of them_.

"Laurin, if you need my help, for any reason, just ask. Fuck Ross."

"Eww, no thank you," she replied scrunching up her face at the mere thought. "What about the Accords?"

"What about them?" Yes, those fucking Accords would tie my hands in some instances, but I doubt that would slow me down, much less stop me, if Laurin were involved.

She just sighed. "You are treading in dangerous waters, Tony."

I smiled. "And?"

"Shit," she muttered. "When this is done, we will get your damn BARF marketable, with a generic neuro-calibration and see how it works out in the real world."

A less than subtle change in topic. I decent plan though. My BARF would not change anything in the brain, simply let you examine and deal with memories that had caused a trauma. Yes, it could be modified, as Rinn had done, but I doubted anyone could accomplish it in anything less than a decade. The way Rinn approached the functionality of the human brain a unique that should not have worked, but did, beautifully. "You have a group you want to target for testing?" I knew she did, even suspected the group before the words came out of her mouth.

"Veterans."

I nodded in agreement. "Pro bono, of course."

She snorted. "Like you need more money."

"Exactly. But first we need a new name." Oh, this collaboration was going to be an interesting one indeed.


End file.
